Previews

Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road

Spiffy:

Incredible special effects; smooth fighting mechanics and animations.

Iffy:

Whether the world can withstand a battle between Trunks and Majin Buu.

The follow-up to last year's Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai, Atari's new Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road adds much more to the popular series than just a couple more words. After sitting down with some good old fashioned hands-on time with DBZSBAR, I must admit that even as an ancient and jaded elder-gamer, I am slowly becoming a convert to the consistently improving franchise. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to let you all know that I don't even like DBZ all that much, if at all.

Trunks, in brief

Following an all new storyline surrounding Vegeta's number one son Trunks, Another Road skews from the rich, if convoluted, history of DBZ to provide a glimpse of what the future holds for Trunks in his battle against Majin Buu. There is a lot of exposition in order to bring players up to speed right away, so it was no surprise that the new Story Mode contained no less than about five solid minutes of talking heads arguing over the fate of the world (and that includes getting bored and pressing the X button to skip through most of the dialog). If you're a DBZ fan, I doubt anything could be dangled in front of you that would be more tantalizing, but if you're not a fan, it may be time to put your (perhaps well-founded) misgivings aside, because actually playing the game is quite fun.

In an effort to improve the renowned fighting experience common to all DBZ titles, Namco Bandai and Dimps have crafted a new camera system that follows the dueling characters around more evenly. This is of pivotal importance because the action gets pretty crazy when characters enter their transformations and start busting out Super Saiyan moves. At one point, I witnessed a rep from Atari take on the computer-controlled opponent and essentially lasso the sun and drag it from the sky to consume her foe in a flaming maelstrom of friction, Ki and death. Now, I'm given to hyperbole, I'll admit, but watching the Atari rep bust out moves that make the usually-dazzling Kamehameha look like kid stuff was simply breathtaking.

Flashy moves and jazzy camera aside, Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road offers more characters than its predecessor: a full 24 playables (though a multitude of other characters make an appearance, most notably: Trunks' mother Bulma with her green hair and rather shocking cleavage). The new Story Mode should provide about six hours of plot-based gameplay that builds upon the saga of DBZ, and, as you might expect, all of the characters are voiced by their television and movie voice actors. The way the Story Mode works is that you have a kind of world map that you can fly around and occasionally you'll encounter events that advance the plot, like some burly, fireball-hurling bad guy laying waste to a nearby town. When you fly over to the event, you'll enter a quick (or lengthy) story interlude and then the fight begins.

At the end of the day, however, the gameplay itself boils down to the same kind of fighting system from the previous Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai. You punch and kick your opponent until you have enough breathing room to charge up some Ki and subsequently fold all of the energy in the universe into a tiny pinprick of white hot energy that you proceed to lance through your opponent's brainstem (or some variation on that theme). It's not terribly original or different, except that the camera works much better and the special effects are even more out of control than in the previous game.

After such a long and (sorry to say) lackluster history with the Dragon Ball Z series, it's sometimes difficult to get excited about any new titles coming from such a tired franchise. Taking that into account, maybe you can understand how rare it is for a game critic like myself to see one of these games and actually come away with a serious desire to play more. In general, I've been pleased to see the improvement in the quality of DBZ games and their evolution into genuinely fun fighting games, so it would appear that Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai Another Road could very easily turn out to be another pair of feathers in both Atari's and Namco Bandai's caps. We've been promised some new reviewable code later in the month, so expect a full report before the game hits retailers in late March.